Striking the Balance (68 page)

But the German foreign minister got up on his hind legs and declared, “Poland was part of the German
Reich
before the coming of the Race to this world, and therefore must return to the
Reich
as part of the Race’s withdrawal from our territory. So the
Führer
has declared.”

Hitler, actually, was quite a lot like the dog in the fable. All he understood was taking; nothing else seemed real to him. Had he only been content to stay at peace with the Soviet Union while he finished Britain, he could have gone on fooling Stalin a while longer and then launched his surprise attack, thereby contending with one foe at a time. He hadn’t waited. He couldn’t wait. He’d paid for it against the USSR. Didn’t he see he’d have to pay far more against the Lizards?

Evidently he didn’t. There was his foreign minister, mouthing phrases that would have been offensive to human opponents. Against the Lizards, who were vastly more powerful than Germany, those phrases struck Molotov as clinically insane.

Through his interpreter, Atvar said, “This proposal is unacceptable to us because it is unacceptable to so many other Tosevites with concerns in the region. It would merely prove a generator of future strife.”

“If you do not immediately cede Poland to us, it will prove a generator of present strife,” von Ribbentrop blustered.

The Lizards’ fleetlord made a noise like a leaking inner tube. “You may tell the
Führer
that the Race is prepared to take the chance.”

“I shall do so,” von Ribbentrop said, and stalked out of the Shepheard’s Hotel meeting room.

Molotov wanted to run after him, to call him back.
Wait, you fool!
was the cry that echoed in his mind. Hitler’s megalomania might drag everyone else down along with Germany. Even the nations with explosive-metal bombs and poison gas weren’t much more than large nuisances to the Lizards. Until they could deliver their weapons somewhere other than along the front line with the aliens, they could not threaten them on equal terms.

The Soviet foreign commissar hesitated. Did von Ribbentrop’s arrogance mean the Hitlerites had such a method? He didn’t believe it. Their rockets were better than anyone else’s, but powerful enough to throw ten tonnes across hundreds, maybe thousands, of kilometers? Soviet rocket scientists assured him the Nazis couldn’t be that far ahead of the USSR

If they were wrong . . .  Molotov didn’t care to think about what might happen if they were wrong. If the Germans could throw explosive-metal bombs hundreds or thousands of kilometers, they were as likely to throw them at Moscow as at the Lizards.

He checked his rising agitation. If the Nazis had such rockets, they would not be so insistent about holding on to Poland. They could launch their bombs from Germany and then scoop up Poland at their leisure. This time, the scientists had to be right.

If they were right . . .  Hitler was reacting from emotion rather than reason. What was Nazi doctrine but perverted romanticism? If you wanted a thing, that meant it should become yours, and that meant you had the right—even the duty—to go out and take it
if
anyone had the gall to object, you ran roughshod over him. Your will was all that mattered.

But if a man a meter and a half tall who weighed fifty kilos wanted something that belonged to a man two meters tall who weighed a hundred kilos and tried to take it, he’d end up with a bloody nose and broken teeth, no matter how strong his will was. The Hitlerites didn’t see that, though their assault on the USSR should have taught it to them.

“Note, Comrade Fleetlord,” Molotov said, “that the German foreign minister’s withdrawal does not imply the rest of us refuse to work out our remaining differences with you.” Yakov Donskoi turned his words into English; Uotat translated the interpreter’s comments into the language of the Lizards.

With a little luck, the aliens would smash the Hitlerites into the ground and save the USSR the trouble.

“Jäger!” Otto Skorzeny shouted. “Get your scrawny arse over here. We’ve got something we need to talk about”

“You mean something besides your having the manners of a bear with a toothache?” Jäger retorted. He didn’t get up. He was busy darning a sock, and it was hard work, because he had to hold it farther away from his face than he was used to. These past couple of years, his sight had begun to lengthen. You fell apart even if you didn’t get shot. It just happened.

“Excuse me, your magnificent Coloneldom, sir, my lord von Jäger,” Skorzeny said, loading his voice with sugar syrup, “would you be so generous and gracious as to honor your most humble and obedient servant with the merest moment of your ever so precious time?”

Grunting, Jäger got to his feet “All the same to you, Skorzeny, I like ‘Get your scrawny arse over here’ better.”

The SS
Standartenführer
chuckled. “Figured you would. Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”

That meant Skorzeny had news he didn’t feel like letting anyone else hear. And that, presumably, meant all hell was going to break loose somewhere, most likely somewhere right around here. Almost plaintively, Jäger said, “I was enjoying the cease-fire.”

“Life’s tough,” Skorzeny said, “and it’s our job to make it tougher—for the Lizards. Your regiment’s still the thin end of the wedge, right? How soon can you be ready to hit our scaly chums a good one right in the snout?”

“We’ve got about half our Panthers back at corps repair center for retrofitting,” Jäger answered. “Fuel lines, new cupolas for the turrets, fuel pump gaskets made the right way, that kind of thing. We took advantage of the cease-fire to do one lot of them, and now that it’s holding, we’re doing the other. Nobody told me—nobody told anybody—it was breaking down.”

“I’m telling you,” the SS man said. “How long till you’re up to strength again? You need those Panthers, don’t you?”

“Just a bit, yes,” Jäger said with what he thought was commendable understatement. “They should all be back here in ten days—a week. If somebody with clout goes and leans on the corps repair crews.”

Skorzeny bit his lip.
“Donnerwetter!
If I lean on them hard, you think they’d have your panzers up here at the front inside five days? That’s my outer limit, and I haven’t got any discretion about it. If they aren’t here by then, old chum, you just have to go without ’em.”

“Go where?” Jäger demanded. “Why are you giving me orders? And not my division commander, I mean?”

“Because I get
my
orders from the
Führer
and the
Reichsführer-SS,
not from some tinpot major general commanding a measly corps,” Skorzeny answered smugly. “Here’s what’s going to happen as soon as you’re ready to motor and the artillery boys are set to do their part, too: I blow Lodz to kingdom come, and you—and everybody else—gets to hit the Lizards while they’re still trying to figure out what’s going on. The war is back, in other words.”

Jäger wondered if his message to the Jews of Lodz had got through. If it had, he wondered if they’d been able to find the bomb the SS man had hidden there somewhere. And those were the least of his worries: “What will the Lizards do to us if we blow up Lodz? They took out one of our cities for every bomb we used during the war. How many will they slag if we use one of those bombs to break a cease-fire?”

“Don’t know,” Skorzeny said. “I do know nobody asked me to worry about it, so I bloody well won’t. I have orders to blast Lodz in the next five days, so a whole raft of big-nosed kikes are going to get themselves fitted for halos along with the Lizards. We have to teach the Lizards and the people who suck up to ’em that we’re too nasty to mess with—and we will.”

“Blowing up the Jews will teach the Lizards something?” Jäger scratched his head. “Why should the Lizards give a damn what happens to the Jews? And with whom are we at war, the Jews or the Lizards?”

“We’re sure as hell at war with the Lizards,” Skorzeny answered, “and we’ve always been at war with the Jews, now haven’t we? You know that. You’ve pissed and moaned about it enough. So we’ll blow up a bunch of kikes
and
a bunch of Lizards, and the
Führer
will be so happy he’ll dance a little jig, the way he did when the frog-eaters gave up in 1940. So—five days maximum. You’ll be ready to roll by then?”

“If I have my panzers back from the workshops, yes,” Jäger said. “Like I said, though, somebody will have to lean on the mechanics.”

“I’ll
take care of that,” the SS man promised with a large, evil grin. “You think they won’t hustle with me holding their toes to the fire?” Jäger wouldn’t have bet against his meaning that literally. “Other thing is, I’ll make it real plain that if they don’t make me happy, they’ll tell Himmler why. Would you rather deal with me or with the little schoolmaster in his spectacles?”

“Good question,” Jäger said. Taken as a man, Skorzeny was a lot more frightening than Himmler. But Skorzeny was just Skorzeny. Himmler personified the organization he led, and that organization invested him with a frightfulness of a different sort.

“The answer is, if you had your choice, you wouldn’t want to get either one of us mad at you, let alone both, right?” Skorzeny said, and Jäger had to nod. The SS
Standartenführer
went on, “As soon as the bomb goes off, you roll east. Who knows? The Lizards are liable to be so surprised, you may end up visiting your Russian girlfriend instead of the other way round. How’d you like that?” He rocked his hips forward and back, deliberately obscene.

“I’ve heard ideas I liked less,” Jäger answered, his voice dry.

Skorzeny boomed laughter. “Oh, I bet you have. I just bet you have.” Out of the blue, he found a brand-new question: “She a Jew, that Russian of yours?”

He asked very casually, as a sergeant of police might have asked a burglary suspect where he was at eleven o’clock one night “Ludmila?” Jäger said, relieved he was able to come back with the truth: “No.”

“Good,” the SS man said. “I didn’t think so, but I wanted to make sure. She won’t be mad at you when Lodz goes up, then, right?”

“No reason she should be,” Jäger said.

“That’s fine,” Skorzeny said. “Yes, that’s fine. You be good, then. Five days, remember. You’ll have your panzers, too, or somebody will be sorry he was ever born.” He headed back toward camp, whistling as he went.

Jäger followed more slowly, doing his best not to show how thoughtful he was. The SS had taken that Polish farmer apart, knowing he was involved in passing news on to the Jews in Lodz. And now Skorzeny was asking whether Ludmila was Jewish. Skorzeny couldn’t know anything, not really, or Jäger wouldn’t still be at the head of his regiment. But suspicions were raising their heads, like plants pushing up through dead leaves.

Jäger wondered if he could get word into Lodz by way of Mieczyslaw. He decided he didn’t dare take the chance, not now. He hoped the Jews already had the news, and that they’d found the bomb. That hope sprang partly from shame at what the
Reich
had already done to them and partly from fear of what the Lizards would do to Germany if an atomic bomb went off in territory they held while truce talks were going on. To say he didn’t think they’d be pleased was putting it mildly.

From the moment Jäger first met Mordechai Anielewicz, he’d seen the Jews had themselves a fine leader in him. If he knew Skorzeny had secreted the bomb in Lodz, he’d have moved heaven and earth to come up with it. Jäger had done his damnedest to make sure the Jew knew.

Five days from now, Skorzeny would press his button or whatever it was he did. Maybe a new sun would seem to rise, as it had outside Breslau. And maybe nothing at all would happen.

What would Skorzeny do then?

Walking around out in the open with Lizards in plain sight felt unnatural. Mutt Daniels found himself automatically looking around for the nearest shell hole or pile of rubble so he’d have somewhere to take cover when firing broke out again.

But firing didn’t break out. One of the Lizards raised a scaly hand and waved at him. He waved back. He’d never been in a cease-fire quite like this one. Back in 1918, the shooting had stopped because the
Boches
threw in the sponge. Neither side had given up here. He knew fighting could pick up again any old time. But it hadn’t yet, and maybe it wouldn’t. He hoped it wouldn’t. By now, he’d had enough fighting to last any three men a couple of lifetimes each.

A couple of his men were taking a bath in a little creek not far away. Their bodies weren’t quite so white and pale as they had been when the cease-fire started. Nobody’d had a chance to get clean for a long time before that. When you were in the front lines, you stayed dirty, mostly because you were liable to get shot if you exposed your body to water and air. After a while, you didn’t notice what you smelled like: everybody else smelled the same way. Now Mutt was starting to get used to not stinking again.

From out of the north, back toward Quincy, came the sound of a human-made internal-combustion engine. Mutt turned around and looked up the road. Sure as hell, here came one of those big Dodge command cars officers had been in the habit of using till gas got too scarce for them to go gallivanting around. Seeing one again was a sure sign the brass thought the cease-fire would last a while.

Sure as hell, a three-star banner fluttered from the aerial of the command car. The fellow who stood in back of the pintle-mounted
.
50 caliber machine gun had three stars painted on his helmet, too. He also had a bone-handled revolver on each hip.

“Heads up, boys,” Mutt called. “That there’s General Patton coming to pay us a call.” Patton had a name for being a tough so-and-so, and for liking to show off, to let everybody know how tough he was. Daniels hoped he wouldn’t prove it by squeezing off a couple of belts of ammo in the Lizards’ direction.

The command car rolled to a halt. Even before the tires had stopped turning, Patton jumped out and came up to Mutt, who happened to be standing closer to the Lizards than anybody else.

Mutt drew himself to attention and saluted, thinking the Lizards would be crazy if they didn’t have somebody with a head drawn on this aggressive-looking newcomer. Trouble was, if they started shooting at Patton, they’d be shooting at him, too.